Global warming is it really happening

Discussion in 'Earth Science' started by some_guy01, Oct 5, 2001.

  1. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    I've been distracted, but I'm going to come back to Edufer's articles (both of them). There is a lot there to consider...

    Questions (I'm still learning about this):

    • What is the (base) trigger of the clathrate gun?
    • Is the clathrate gun at one location or spread throughout the oceans of the world?
    • If triggered, is it an "all or nothing" trigger or can it be partially triggered?
    • Aren't there other measures that validate (or not) the world temperatures seen in the isotope ratios?

    Are you talking about Stephen Schneider here? I don't understand this "Hall of Shame" reference as it seems to quote Schneider out of context and then includes a reference to the full statement which shows how out of context the quote is.

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  3. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    Re: some cutting edge science?

    This is the "chicken and egg" that bothered me. Which came first -- an increase in temperature or the firing of the gun (which led to even more increase in temperature)? In other words, does this suggest that even a minor global warming (by whatever cause) could cause an increase in ocean temperatures which fires the gun and pushes the temperature up drastically?

    Did somebody say doomsday?!?

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  5. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    Wait a sec. You don't get away that easy. :bugeye:

    The key word in your paragraph above is "somehow". How do you know that El Ninos (how do you get an 'n' with a tilde on an American keyboard?) do not respond to (as opposed to "need") temperature changes like the Jet Stream does? Also, once the gun fires (assuming it's pretty large), how can it not affect temperatures (local and/or global) since CH4 is a more effective greenhouse gas than CO2?

    Finally, does "a lot of local effects" add up to a global effect?

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  7. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

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    The quid lies in the relative quantities of both gases - but don't worry, both gases have a minor "heat retention hability" compared to <b>water vapor</b>. Relax, sleep well! The sky is not falling!

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  8. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    Not when I'm high on caffiene...

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    • What are the percentages of the different states (gas, liquid, solid) of water vapor in the atmosphere?
    • What is the radiative forcing effect of each of the states of water vapor?
    • How long lived in the atmosphere is water vapor and how does that compare to the other greenhouse gases?
    • What is the feedback effect of other greenhouse gases (in this case, methane) on the water vapor in the atmosphere?

    Time to go chase the cat around the house...

    :m:
     
  9. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

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    791
    Water is found in the atmosphere in liquid form as rain. I think there are not records of the actual percentage of liquid water in the atmosphere in a given moment in any part of the world, either locally or globally, as rains vary so much in intensity, extension and duration that the task of measuring it would be an impossible task –as well as useless. The same goes for the solid form, hail. That is you consider that glaciers and polar ice caps are not located in contact with the atmosphere.

    As the most common and abundant form of water in the atmosphere, vapor also varies widely, depending of regional characteristics (jungles and seas: a lot; sandy and hot deserts: almost none.) Scientists measure the amount of water in the air as “<b>relative humidity</b>”, and express it in the percentage of water vapor contained in a given <b>volume</b> of air.

    The air contains about 20.95% oxygen, 78.08% nitrogen, 0.93% argon, and the remaining 1% is distributed among the rest of known gases as neon, krypton, methane, CO2, nitrous oxides, CFCs, helium, hydrogen, etc (a long list of etc). For a visual idea of what are the relative proportions of gases see this graph prepared by me (although it is in Spanish as it was made for an article in our Spanish website – element’s symbols are universal, so you won’t have trouble identifying them). I have represented the atmosphere as a column of 1000 meters, and there we can see the gases divided in their respective proportions, ie: in the topmost horizontal columnnitrogen (N) is represented by a 780.8 meter column, oxygen hs a 209.5 m column, the rest of all gases = 9.70 m. This small red block is represented in the second row as a 9.70 meters long column, where argon has 9.30 m, CO2 = 0.30 m (or 30 cm), and the rest are in the 9.34 cm red block NOTE: here is typing error in the graph, as the real figure should read: 9.34 <b>cm</b> and not 9.34 <b>m</b>. (I will correct the mistake and replace the graph in the page, oops!)

    Every red block in the right is reproduced in the next row with a new measuring unit.

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    (In case the image does not appear in the screen, just go to the page http://mitosyfraudes.8k.com/articulos/Gases.html and see the graph there. It also contains a table with proportions of gases in the atmosphere. Sorry it is in Spanish: time to learn some other language....

    An interesting thing is that you can see ozone is just <b>3/100 of a millimeter</b> (or 0.000003% of the atmosphere content). You really believe such trifle amount of a gas can block UV radiation? Just compare that with those huge 209.5 meters of oxygen, each molecule stealing <b>118.111 kcal/mol</b> of energy from incoming UV photons, while Ozone just absorbs <b>a mere 64 kcal/mol</b>!!!

    Water vapor has only one state for “radiative” forcing effect, as vapor is just vapor. Dr. Sherwood Idso, when working at the Water Conservation Laboratory in Phoenix, AR, published a paper in Science where he showed the radiative force of water vapor to be 0.19°C * watt * m2 in inland areas.

    Idso found that an increase of water vapor in the air enough to rise water vapor pressure from 4 to 20 hectopascals corresponds to an increase in surface air temperature of 11.4°C at sunrise. This great increase in the minimum temperature in the daily cycle shows the protective effect of water vapor (as it retains heat during the cold nights). Idso calculated then that for each extra watt of radiative energy passing through a 1 m2 air layer close to the ground, the air temperature responds with a 0.196°C, but discovered that in areas near the oceans this force <b>was reduced to half</B>. He calculated that, as the Earth is about 70% covered by oceans, estimated the global radiative force as 0.113°C*watt*m2.

    He translated this effect to a imagined increase of CO2 from 300 ppm to 600 ppm (a doubling), It is worth 2.28 watts*m2 so multiplying it for the radiative force of 0,113°C gives an equivalent global mean temperature increase of 0.25°C –what was in wide contrast with the “fashion” models predicting then between 4 to 8°C. Same calculations were performed by Reginald Newell, from MIT and Thomas Dopplick, from the Scott Air Force Base. After some warming scientists complied to Science, (among them Stephen Schneider and V. Ramanathan), Idso gave a lecture at the Scripps Institute and showed, beyond any doubt (silencing the opposing claims) that these were the correct values for the radiative force of water vapor, and that the doubling of CO2 concentrations would produce not more than 0,3°C. Even James Hansen models in August 1981 at the Goddard Space Flight enter/NASA, have given similar results = 0,2°C for a doubling of CO2 contents.

    Water vapor LIVES in the atmosphere. In some places is about 99% and in some deserts is about 5%. A 60% relative humidity is considered the “normal”. But “normal” for people in the Amazon is 90% and for the Sheik of Arabia it is 10%. But in the great plains of America, or the Pampas, a “normal” day will have about 65-80%. As you have seen, warm air can hold more water vapor than cold air, so when it gets cooler at dusk, you see the hygrometer going up, showing more relative humidity, even though the number of water molecules has not increased in the same volume of air. It happens that the volume of air has become smaller due to the compression caused by cooling. That’s the reason why planes fly better in cold air than they do in warm air, and parachutes come down slower in cold weather than in hot humid days. Humidity also gives added lift to planes and other flying objects using aerodynamics forces.

    I don’t recall the exact figures for each one, right now. Perhaps Andre has the data, but it is accepted that CO2 has an influence on the greenhouse effect equivalent to about 3.5%, that is, water vapor is blamed for retaining 93-95% of the heat (incoming to and radiated by Earth). Although methane is said to be 20 times more powerful greenhouse gas than CO2, it is among the bunch of gases that comprise 0.075% of the atmosphere, while CO2 alone is 0,03. Something that makes me wonder, how much is the feedback effect of <b>Oxygen and Nitrogen, that form 99% of the atmosphere?</b> Someone nows?

    What if “scientists” discover that man is causing an Oxygen “hole” somewhere in Earth? Shall we see a <b>“Save the Oxygen Layer”</b> campaign? If there is money into it, be sure we’ll see it…

    BatM, Andre and I are thinking to charge you for a tuition charge in the master degree you'll get after this intensive course on atmospheric science you are getting for free...

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  10. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    Hmmm. Yeah...

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    This didn't come out quite the way I expected (and I've been a bit distracted). Now I'll have to go back and decide if:

    • I'm missing something.
    • You (and Andre) are missing something.
    • We're both missing something.

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  11. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

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    I'd bet my boots on the third one.

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  12. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

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    I am beginning to understand the issue. But I had to go back to your earlier posts on the clathrate gun to work up from there. Still, I have to study it more closely for really grasping the Theory. Not easy, but it can be done. Rome was not built in a day...

    BTW, when I said I'd bet my boots on the third option (the three of us are missing something), I was referring to the fact that there are so much uncertainties in the science studying the climate, that we three (along with thousands of scientists too), are missing millions of facts still unknown, to be discovered when the science grows out of age -- if that ever happens.

    Another BTW: Still freezing to death, up there? Down here we are having the coldest summer in history, minimum temperatures of 12°C and highest of 24°C, for a whole week. The maximum temperature since last summer (2002) was 39°C, when it is common to have 42 - 45°C. Snow storms in the mountains off Mendoza, and Bariloche, snow fall in the city of Tandil, Buenos Aires province (100 meters elevation) and 100 km from the sea, at about the latitude of Washington... Of course, the swallows that depart from the city of Goya, Corrientes, and end up in San José de Capistrano, California, have already started they migration - another week earlier than normal.

    Weird things are happening, too much cold. But Melissa Carey, a "specialist in global change policiy", from the EDF (Environmental Defense Fund) said two days ago that this cold weather has been predicted by the models they have. See the stupid story at http://www.cnsnews.com/ViewCulture.asp?Page=\Culture\archive\200302\CUL20030220a.html
     
  13. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    Wow!

    Boy, this thread's taken quite a turn. Even Edufer is saying he's not up on the Theory.

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    Let's see what I can dig into here...
     
  14. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    Do you have a reference for what you're saying here?

    http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a000800/a000829/index.html
    http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a000800/a000828/index.html

    Edit: oops -- posted the same graph twice -- fixed.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2003
  15. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    I still cannot find it in me to think of them as "bad" people. All scientists theorize about a problem and then attempt to prove the theory by collecting and analyzing data. Although they represent the prevailing opinion, prevailing opinions have been wrong before.

    This is a good point. What I'd prefer to see (and think would be more productive) is counter-models rather than model bashing based upon some data points.

    I purposely did not say "main cause". What I was asking was whether CO2 had no effect on global warming.
     
    Last edited: Feb 23, 2003
  16. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    Fighting the Good Fight...

    Possibly. For now, I'm going to capitulate on this subject and consider going to look at books like the above. My goal in this discussion (even way back when I jumped in on Edufer) had never been to say global warming is a fact and the environmental coalition has it all correct. For the most part, I've been playing the part of Devil's Advocate to test some of what I've seen discussed and to (try to) ensure some balance in the presentation. As I've said, I'm not a climatologist and really had no background in this before coming to this thread (and taking on Edufer

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    ).

    I'll be keeping an eye on it...

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  17. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

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    We've come to the crucial point, at last. You will never see counter-modelling presented by the warming skeptics, just because skeptics (we) insist that <b>modelling is flawed</b>, inherently inaccurate. Skeptics use the warmer's models, filling them with real variables taken from real world measurements, start the models running from the year 1700 (for example, any other date will render the same results) and run the models to our days, and the warming predicted is alwasy about 4°C to 8°C higher than our present temperatures.

    We deal with real world data and measurements, the other guys deal with a virtual world of bits and bytes. The Lord of the Rings is more believable than any climate model.

    Well, BatM, I am not a climatologist myself, but I have been studying the science for about fifteen years now, and I think I have loaded a fairly good degree of information on my duffle bag. I now about physics and chemistry, so it is not easy to make me swallow flawed reasoning or weird theories. But, as we ignore more than we can ever learn, there is the reomote possibility that things could somewhat different from what we think.
     
  18. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    And that, in essense, is the cop-out I was addressing as many (most?) of the skeptics do have a model by which they judge the models of the warmers against. The skeptics just will not put that model down on paper in testable terms (probably because other skeptics could then bash that model as well...

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    )

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  19. BatM Member At Large Registered Senior Member

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    Re: Just beginning

    Of note -- if you don't find people to "play with" on this board, you could try the one at James Randi's website.

    :m:
     
  20. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

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    791
    I am not quitting, as long there is somebody that still thinks that global warming is "human induced" and CO2 is a strong factor for warming. Perhaps BatM has thrown in the towel, but I would love to keep reading (and saving in my hard disk for further study) whatever yuo have to tell us on the methane and Clathrate gun.

    Keep going!
     
  21. fireguy_31 mors ante servitium Registered Senior Member

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    Re: The issue is the SCIENTIFIC METHOD

    Please review the definition of the scientific method in your freshman science book and start over. The way the Red -- excuse me again, I meant Green -- agenda is normally presented, it should be posted under Religion. [/B][/QUOTE]


    Okay Fraggle, you got me!! I can't spell, nor will i utilize spell check in order to misrepresent myself like sooo many others do.. Your reference to [sic] in your quote of me is very clever, your profs. must be very proud of your academic awareness.

    Beyond the insults -- which by the way I thought were very good and well thought out -- the issue of Scientific Method is at hand..

    I will admit to a lack of scientific evidence in my claims, it was an irresponsible off the cuff remark caused by disdain for the lack of "Common Sense" people have.

    On the issue of scientific method allow me to provide an "Academic" response, then followed by a common sensical one.

    The problem with current Scientific Method -- I believe I understand your position -- is that it is reductionist in nature; simply put modern science views everything like a machine that can be understood by an understanding of it's parts.(Lovelock, 1979) The problems associated with that ideology are becoming more and more evident as the scientific community begins looking at the world as more than just something as a sum of it's parts. Read John Tuxill and Chris Bright, "Biodiversity: State of the world, 1998." The longterm effects of this are clearly pointed out in Fritjof Capra's book, "The Turning Point." I suggest you read it.

    So, you're wondering what the hell this has to do with Global Warming.. Spend your time lookiing at the whole; One third of all newborns in the USA will develop asthma because of airborn particulates generated through human activity. Reduction of fertile agricultural land IS, as you also pointed out, caused by human activity.

    Increasing deserts are caused by warming of the Earth, which cannot be "conclusively" proved to be a result of either natural occuring events or human activity. But let me propose a scenario to you; the earth is like a bubble, our atmosphere allows for life to exist but, it also acts as a barrier where harmfull gasses cannot escape.(I understand there are several theories that propose natural processes on earth remove those gasses, but they are just that-theories) With that said, how long do you think you could survive in an airtight structure with emissions comming from several vehicles running? Common sense tells me not very long!

    Everything I claimed in my earlier blurb can be attributed to human activity. Arguing the validity of Global Warming is a fruitless endeavour(I looked up the spelling of that word just for you

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    when compared to the WHOLE issue of environmental destruction, which at this point may or may not be the cause of Global Warming.

    Look at the big picture, and use common sense.. Science can not tell you the human experience........Dude!

    One last question, how the hell can you refer to ice cap reduction on MARS as evidence for ice cap reduction on Earth?? I have never been to Mars, but I will go out on a limb here and say that there are NO simularities between Mars and Earth, especially ice cap reduction!
     
  22. Edufer Tired warrior Registered Senior Member

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    Scientific methodology revisited

    We are going here into the Gestalt Theory, nicely explained in Olaf Stapledon’s short story “More than Human”, a science fiction classic of the fifties.

    I think science now had the approach of “if you can measure it (see, touch, taste, smell, etc.), then it exists”. It is the classic method of close observation and arriving to logical conclusions that has been the foundation of science for millennia. Now it seems the New World Order have had success in installing the “science by perception” methodology in the center of the stage. Observation and measurements are no longer needed. Projections, modeling, extrapolations, statistical twisting and stretching of data, and other kind of tricks, are the basis of the new scientific method. And Tuxill & Bright book, “Biodiversity, etc.” runs into this category. It is a remake of the ancient “Global 2000 Report” of Jimmy Carter, and the fixed tunnel vision of Worldwatch Institute’s “State of the World Reports”. You could compare these reports on the state of the world with Bjorn Lomborg’s “The Skeptical Environmentalist: The True State of the World”, and arrive at the conclusion that we really know nothing: most of the warnings and alarming statements about the “state of the world” are the byproduct of manipulated statistical work, that provides projections on “species extinctions” or “warming”, or “desertification”, or “water shortages”, or “sea level increase”, etc, in spite of real world measurements and observations. See the proof: you are falling in the trap of the data manipulators:
    These Apocalyptic prophecies (they are not forecasts) are the result of computer projections obtained by the known method in statistics of “convenience sampling”, where the confidence levels are ZERO, thus the error margin is way above 100%. There are areas where some fertility is lost if there is no replacement of nutrients in the soil –as it happens to “natural” crops of the Indians in the Amazon and other jungles. This loss of fertile land and diminishing crop yields were the reasons of the collapse of the Mayan civilization. Their population increased beyond the point of sustainability by their antique agricultural technologies. Today, our technologies provide the solutions of those ancients problems and are making our development <b>“sustained”</b>, a further step in the “sustainable development” theory.
    Desertification, again, is the product of what was mentioned above: data manipulation. In fact, the vast region of the Sahel, south of the Sahara desert, from the Atlantic Ocean in the west, to the Red Sea in the east, it has been greening from the past 20 years, the vegetation and prairies increasing (the desert is retreating. See the article in New Scientist: http://www.newscientist.com/hottopics/climate/climate.jsp?id=ns99992811 ).

    We can see the political factor messing with facts when your read from the article: <font color=blue>“Desertification is still often viewed as an irreversible process triggered by a deadly combination of declining rainfall and destructive farming methods. In August, the UN Environment Programme told the World Summit in Johannesburg that over 45 per cent of Africa is in the grip of desertification, with the Sahel worst affected.”</font>

    Then comes this: <font color=blue>”But a team of geographers from Britain, Sweden and Denmark has spent the summer re-examining archive satellite images taken across the Sahel. Andrew Warren of University College London told <B>New Scientist</B> that the unpublished analysis shows that "vegetation seems to have increased significantly" in the past 15 years, with major regrowth in southern Mauritania, northern Burkina Faso, north-western Niger, central Chad, much of Sudan and parts of Eritrea. But there is confusion over why the Sahel is becoming green. Rasmussen believes the main reason is increased rainfall since the great droughts of the early 1970s and 1980s. But farmers have also been adopting better methods of keeping soil and water on their land.”</font>
    Not much, if there are not filters and special equipment for purifying the air, (as done inside the space station and shuttles: astronauts are machines that produce CO2 –and other gases). Your scenario can not be extrapolated to the real world, where millions of variables are working in keeping a balance of forces at a certain level. The balance level has not been always the same, as paleoclimatology and geology have shown that <b>“the change is the normal state of the Earth”</b>. But politics are putting on mankind the blame for an alleged influence on species extinctions and climate change. That is a sample of arrogance that thinks man is capable of anything. Man can do many things, but he has well known limits. He can build dams, roads, move mountains, divert rivers, etc, and change some local weather conditions with forest cutting and/or planting, making artificial lakes, etc. But a global change is harder to accomplish. There are huge amounts of energy involved, and man has not yet managed to produce and use that amounts of energy.
    Then what can tell us about it? Zen Buddhism?. Historians? This remark tell us you are Aristotelian, and contrary to Occam, Roger Bacon, Oresnes, etc, that in the Medieval times reacted against Aristotle, and declared that “experience” should be the basis of scientific knowledge. You must keep in mind that “science” comes from the Latin word <I>scientia</I>, derived from <I>sciens, scientis, scire</I>, which means <b>“knowledge”</b>. We could say that anything we know is science, compared to everything we “believe” without scientific or real proof (that should be categorized as “superstition” or maybe “religion”).
    Does sun cycles, sunspots, increasing or decreasing solar radiation ring a bell on your ears? If not, perhaps you should move into this field of knowledge. It is fascinating.
     
  23. Fraggle Rocker Staff Member

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    24,690
    Ice caps

    You must have a lot of patience. I haven't been able to find my original post in the ten or whatever pages of this thread so I don't know what I might have been raving about at the time. Sorry. I guess I am guilty of believing that people who are serious about education ought to have the discipline and patience to learn to spell. But not everyone agrees with me. As for my professors, the last one must have retired at least fifteen years ago.
    Yeah, I have recently had to state that I believe Occam's Razor is highly overrated. The "simplest" explanation for stuff used to be "because God created it that way," or "because your moon in in Sagittarius."
    Sure, but the whole issue of environmental destruction is itself arguable.

    -- By some measures the aggregate global rate of deforestation has already reached zero.

    -- There are more breeding pairs of Hyacinthine Macaws, the poster child of the endangered species movement, safely distributed across North America in commercial aviaries, than there are in Brazil.
    The point was that the ice caps on Earth have been receding, and the knee-jerk reaction was, ohmigod, global warming, this is all our fault. Then somebody noticed that the ice caps on Mars are also receeding. Since global warming on Mars cannot be our fault somebody had to roll up their sleeves and do some real science. They finally realized that the energy output of the sun varies significantly and we had never tried to correlate it with global warming. Not only is there a similarity between Earth and Mars, but it generated an inquiry that once again casts doubt on the entire human cataclyst faith.
     

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